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#1Swahili by John
SwahiliEnglish

Nimepata matokeo ya upimaji wako; bila shaka umepatwa na malaria. Nimekuandikia maelezo ya matumizi ya dawa. Meza vidonge hivi vinne, na baada ya masaa sita, meza vidonge viwili vingine. Halafu meza vidonge viwili kila siku kwa wiki nzima. Rudi hapa kama hujapata nafuu.

I have your test results; without doubt you have malaria. I’ve written you a prescription. Swallow these four tablets, and after six hours take another two. Then swallow two tablets each day for a whole week. Come back here if you don’t feel any improvement.

WORDS:


  • pata - receive (v. stem)
  • matokeo - results/outcome
  • -a - the a of association, means "of", and connects words (ng'ombe ya John - John's cow), and it changes form (ya, la, za, vya) depending on what noun class it's in.
  • upimaji - assessment
  • bila - without
  • shaka - doubt
  • -patwa na - to come down with a sickness
  • malaria - malaria
  • andikia - write (v. stem)
  • maelezo - info/description
  • matumizi - consumption
  • dawa - drug
  • meza - To swallow something (v. stem)
  • Vidonge - pills/tablets
  • hivi - these
  • vinne - four
  • na - with/and
  • baada - after
  • masaa - hours
  • sita - six
  • viwili - two
  • vingine - other/another
  • Halafu - Later/then
  • siku - day
  • kila - every/each
  • kwa - for/during
  • wiki - week
  • nzima - complete/full
  • rudi - to return (v. stem)
  • hapa - here
  • kama - if
  • pata - to get/gain (v. stem) (also, 99% sure the -ja- on this verb is reflexive)
  • nafuu - recovery/improvement

GRAMMAR:

Swahili is a Bantu-family language spoken in East Africa as a lingua franca by more than 100 million people. There are no articles, and has a big system of noun classes. It is highly aggluninative, and is SVO in most cases, but can take SOV on occasion. See more on sentence structure below

Pronoun ChartPositive Subject Prefixes Negative Prefixes Object Infex
Mimi = I Ni- Si- -ni-
Wewe = You U- Hu- -ku-
Yeye = He/she/it A- Ha- -mu-
Sisi = We Tu- Hatu- -tu-
Ninyi = You(pl.) M- Ham- -wa- ..... -eni
Wao = They Wa- Hawa- -wa-

All infinitives have ku- at the beginning, and a smaller group of them start with kw-. Verbs are formed like this: Subject prefixes-tense marker-object prefix(optional)-verb stem
for example, Ninakupenda is I love you
Ni- is the subject prefix for I, -na- is the tense marker, -ku- is the object marker for you(singular), and penda is the verb stem coming from 'kupenda' - to love/like.
Without the object in the verb, it becomes SVO.(Ninasoma kitabu - I'm reading a book)

Verbs also change drastically in the negative present. For all other negative tenses, you keep the tense marker, but you remove the present tense marker (-na-) in the negative present. All tenses remove the positive subject prefix and replace it with a negative prefix in the negative prefix (duh), and 1 more thing: in the negative present, any verb roots that end in -a (penda, soma, sema, pika) change to an -i (Ninapenda --> Sipendi, Wanapika -> Hawapiki)

You form the imperative by just saying the verb stem (ie. Pika! means Cook!)

Possessive Pronouns

Swahili English
-angu my/mine
-ako your/yours
-ake his/her
-etu our/ours
-enu your/yours(plural)
-ao their/theirs

The words in the chart above will take different prefixes depending on the class, but all of them will still mean the same thing(I.E. - Changu, vyangu, langu, yangu, and zangu will all still mean "My/Mine") The suffix it receives depends on what noun class the noun is.

Tenses

  • Present -na-
  • Past -li-
  • Future -ta-
  • Conditional/if -ki-
  • Past perfect -me-
  • Habitual -hu-